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Obama’s ‘missing year’ at Columbia found?
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Did he attend classes at Columbia?
Henry Franklin Graff, professor emeritus of history at Columbia for 46 years, has cast doubt on claims Obama attended classes at the New York City university.
Henry Franklin Graff
“I have no recollection of Barack Obama at Columbia, and I am sure he never attended any of my classes,” Graff told WND in a telephone interview.
“For 46 years, I taught political history, diplomatic history and one of the pioneering courses on presidential history, and every future politician of note who went through Columbia in those years took one or more of my classes – every one, that is, except Barack Obama.”
Graff further told WND no professor he knew could remember having Obama as a student at Columbia.
“Nobody I knew at Columbia ever remembers Obama being there,” Graff insisted.
The undocumented student
On Nov. 5, 2008, Columbia University celebrated Obama’s election as president by publishing an article in Columbia News titled “Barack Obama, CC ’83, First Columbia Graduate Elected President of the United States.”
“Obama attended Columbia College from 1981 to 1983, after transferring in his junior year from Occidental College,” the article read in part.
In his 2010 biography of Obama, “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,” journalist David Remnick states on pages 112-113 that Obama moved to New York City in the summer of 1981 to co-occupy an apartment at 142 West 109th Street, off Amsterdam Avenue, with Occidental friend Phil Boerner.
Remnick does not provide footnotes to document the claims, however.
Two pages later, Remnick recounts how on the night of Nov. 24, 1982, Obama’s father was killed driving drunk in Nairobi, “during Obama’s first semester of his senior year at Columbia,” with the assumption this was Obama’s second academic year at Columbia.
Remnick footnotes the passage regarding the death of Obama’s father on page 215 with a reference to an article by Jon Meacham titled “On His Own,” published in Newsweek Sept. 1, 2008.
Meacham’s mention of Obama attending Columbia is so limited that he fails to specify the amount of time Obama spent attending classes at the university.
In his 2012 biography of Obama, “Barack Obama: The Story,” author and editor David Maraniss recounts, beginning on page 418, an Obama move to New York City on Aug. 25, 1981, “a week before orientation day at Columbia College.”
David Maraniss
On pages 465-466, Maraniss writes of Obama’s last month at Columbia, May 1983:
[Obama] had received mostly A’s in his coursework during those two years, he said later, and finished with a 3.7 grade point average. Including his two years at Occidental, his college education had cost about fifty thousand dollars for the four years and was a family effort. About half came from scholarships and student loans, a bit from the off-the-books part-time summer jobs, and most of the rest from his grandmother, Tut, who had devoted part of her salary each year to his education.
Although the passage is not accompanied by a footnote, the reference “he said later” suggests Maraniss got the information from Obama himself or from interviews in which Obama presented the information.
The “off-the-books” part-time summer employment is unlikely to be independently verified. Nor does Maraniss produce any Columbia transcript or reference to a transcript that would document the grade-point average. Maraniss also fails to provide or reference any Columbia financial records that might have given insight into the source or sources Obama used to pay tuition.
Columbia: ‘Obama’s lost years’
No less than Obama-supporting Snopes.com has admitted little is known about Obama’s Columbia years.
“Even those who have studied Barack Obama’s background in detail don’t generally know much about his time at Columbia University, however, as he hasn’t revealed much about that period of his life in his public writings and statements, nor has he made his transcripts or other school records from Columbia available for public examination,” the website states.
An editorial titled “Obama’s Lost Years,” published in the Wall Street Journal Sept. 11, 2008, noted Fox News contacted some 400 students who were at Columbia from 1981 to 1983 and found no one who remembered him.
New York Times reporter Janny Scott, who later wrote a favorable biography of Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, wrote in an Oct. 30, 2007, story that Obama “declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.”
“He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life,” said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, told Scott.
Scott wrote that one person who did remember Obama was Michael L. Baron, who taught a senior seminar on international politics and American policy. Baron said he was Obama’s adviser on the senior thesis for that course and gave him an A for the course. Baron later wrote Obama a recommendation for Harvard Law School.
An Associated Press story May 16, 2008, also stated the Obama campaign declined to discuss Obama’s “time at Columbia and his friendships in general.”
The campaign, however, listed five locations where Obama lived during a period of four years in New York City: three on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and two in Brooklyn. His memoir mentions two others on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the AP noted.
snip.....
snip......
Did he attend classes at Columbia?
Henry Franklin Graff, professor emeritus of history at Columbia for 46 years, has cast doubt on claims Obama attended classes at the New York City university.
Henry Franklin Graff
“I have no recollection of Barack Obama at Columbia, and I am sure he never attended any of my classes,” Graff told WND in a telephone interview.
“For 46 years, I taught political history, diplomatic history and one of the pioneering courses on presidential history, and every future politician of note who went through Columbia in those years took one or more of my classes – every one, that is, except Barack Obama.”
Graff further told WND no professor he knew could remember having Obama as a student at Columbia.
“Nobody I knew at Columbia ever remembers Obama being there,” Graff insisted.
The undocumented student
On Nov. 5, 2008, Columbia University celebrated Obama’s election as president by publishing an article in Columbia News titled “Barack Obama, CC ’83, First Columbia Graduate Elected President of the United States.”
“Obama attended Columbia College from 1981 to 1983, after transferring in his junior year from Occidental College,” the article read in part.
In his 2010 biography of Obama, “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,” journalist David Remnick states on pages 112-113 that Obama moved to New York City in the summer of 1981 to co-occupy an apartment at 142 West 109th Street, off Amsterdam Avenue, with Occidental friend Phil Boerner.
Remnick does not provide footnotes to document the claims, however.
Two pages later, Remnick recounts how on the night of Nov. 24, 1982, Obama’s father was killed driving drunk in Nairobi, “during Obama’s first semester of his senior year at Columbia,” with the assumption this was Obama’s second academic year at Columbia.
Remnick footnotes the passage regarding the death of Obama’s father on page 215 with a reference to an article by Jon Meacham titled “On His Own,” published in Newsweek Sept. 1, 2008.
Meacham’s mention of Obama attending Columbia is so limited that he fails to specify the amount of time Obama spent attending classes at the university.
In his 2012 biography of Obama, “Barack Obama: The Story,” author and editor David Maraniss recounts, beginning on page 418, an Obama move to New York City on Aug. 25, 1981, “a week before orientation day at Columbia College.”
David Maraniss
On pages 465-466, Maraniss writes of Obama’s last month at Columbia, May 1983:
[Obama] had received mostly A’s in his coursework during those two years, he said later, and finished with a 3.7 grade point average. Including his two years at Occidental, his college education had cost about fifty thousand dollars for the four years and was a family effort. About half came from scholarships and student loans, a bit from the off-the-books part-time summer jobs, and most of the rest from his grandmother, Tut, who had devoted part of her salary each year to his education.
Although the passage is not accompanied by a footnote, the reference “he said later” suggests Maraniss got the information from Obama himself or from interviews in which Obama presented the information.
The “off-the-books” part-time summer employment is unlikely to be independently verified. Nor does Maraniss produce any Columbia transcript or reference to a transcript that would document the grade-point average. Maraniss also fails to provide or reference any Columbia financial records that might have given insight into the source or sources Obama used to pay tuition.
Columbia: ‘Obama’s lost years’
No less than Obama-supporting Snopes.com has admitted little is known about Obama’s Columbia years.
“Even those who have studied Barack Obama’s background in detail don’t generally know much about his time at Columbia University, however, as he hasn’t revealed much about that period of his life in his public writings and statements, nor has he made his transcripts or other school records from Columbia available for public examination,” the website states.
An editorial titled “Obama’s Lost Years,” published in the Wall Street Journal Sept. 11, 2008, noted Fox News contacted some 400 students who were at Columbia from 1981 to 1983 and found no one who remembered him.
New York Times reporter Janny Scott, who later wrote a favorable biography of Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, wrote in an Oct. 30, 2007, story that Obama “declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.”
“He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life,” said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, told Scott.
Scott wrote that one person who did remember Obama was Michael L. Baron, who taught a senior seminar on international politics and American policy. Baron said he was Obama’s adviser on the senior thesis for that course and gave him an A for the course. Baron later wrote Obama a recommendation for Harvard Law School.
An Associated Press story May 16, 2008, also stated the Obama campaign declined to discuss Obama’s “time at Columbia and his friendships in general.”
The campaign, however, listed five locations where Obama lived during a period of four years in New York City: three on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and two in Brooklyn. His memoir mentions two others on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the AP noted.
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